


one remains

by Rahmi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-03
Updated: 2010-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahmi/pseuds/Rahmi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode codas for all seasons that aren't long enough to be individual fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. pilot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by the Pilot, way back when.

Sammy throws his second hand backpack onto the couch hard enough that the thing splits open along the zipper. Dean rolls his eyes and pins his little brother with a glare; they don't have enough money right now to find a new backpack. Sammy at least has the grace to look semi-abashed by it, so Dean doesn't hit him upside the head. Much.

He reaches over to smack the back of Sammy's head, just to make sure that thought stays put.

"Hey!" Sammy turns to glare at him, little mini version of Dad's hard stare, and Dean's reaching out to hit him again before he realizes it. "Stop it!"

The little brat tries to kick him back, but he just catches Sammy's leg and holds it long enough that his brother almost loses his balance and falls on his butt. When he lets go, Sammy just huffs and crosses his arms (teenage angst kicking in early, Dad likes to say).

Sammy's head is hard enough that Dean's hand has gotta hurt more than the kid's head, but he pats Sammy on top of his messy curls anyway. Kid's a drama queen sometimes. "Don't go breaking my backpack, dingus. You're gonna need it."

"Whatever," Sammy mumbles. Dean rolls his eyes. Textbook example of early puberty, though Sammy turns red and screeches whenever Dean says that. It's why he says it so often, come to think of it. "Can we go see the train yard today?"

Ugh.

Sammy's got this... thing for trains, Dean knows. If he were any older, Dean would call it a hard on to rival a boy's first glance at Playboy. He likes how fast they go, he likes the noises they make, and the freaky little squirt even likes the way they _smell._  
  
However, he hates the Impala. Bitches constantly about anything and everything, from the creaking doors ("Dude, it adds character. What are you, some kind of idiotic freak?") to the seats. Dean thinks there's something seriously wrong with a little brother who thinks a train is better than the Impala, but whatever, it just means he gets to worship the Impala all by himself.

He just knows if he shows enough interest in her that Dad'll give her to him eventually. When he's legally allowed to drive, anyway.

"Yeah, sure, we can go see the trains, sparky," Dean says and watches Sammy's eyes light up, because he's a huge _dork_. "Anything else you want before we go look at all the pretty choo-choos?"

"You're such a jerk!" Sammy says on a huff, but a minute later he mumbles a subdued, "No. Can we go?" so Dean figures he's one this round.

Which is good, because he freakin' hates stupid trains and he has to get his kicks in somewhere.

* * *

When Sam takes off for college (and Jesus Christ, he should have seen that coming) and Dad's too drunk or angry to find jobs for them, Dean finds himself purposely picking motel rooms close to train tracks. It's fucking stupid, is what it is, because Dean can't sleep through the whistles and the rumbling now anymore than he ever could, but he finds them stupidly comforting all the same.

He is not, however, so far gone that he's willing to ride one of the damn things. For the most part. So, okay, he snuck onboard a train for a few hours, then jumped off, and hitched his way back to the motel, but that was just thrill seeking. Really. Nothing to worry about and he was _not_ pining for his stupid, argumentative little brother.

Just like he hadn't turned around and expected to meet Sam's downright orgasmic grin afterwards. Little bitch was creepy when it came to trains.

* * *

There's a guy with a big, classic black car near where Sam finally ends up getting an apartment. It's not the Impala; even Sam can tell it's not in the same league as his brother's car, but. It's there and it's close by and sometimes if he hangs around long enough the guy who owns it goes on a long drive and he can stand there and inhale the fume.

Which is really kind of disgusting, when he thinks about it, but it almost smells the same. Almost. It doesn't creak like the Impala though, and when he covertly runs his hand across the hood or the trunk the paint is too slick, too new. Blood's never soaked into it, there's never been missing patches of paint, hurriedly fixed, when something acidic had made both Dad and Dean freak the hell out over the car.

There's no faint pot marks in the metal from random monsters and the car's never blaring the right kind of music. Sam still expects to see Dean slouching in the driver's seat every time he walks by.

* * *

Sammy's brooding. Understandable, 'cause his girlfriend just fried, but Dean hates it. He wants to freaking' _kill something_ so badly that his fingers are twitching on the wheel. He settles for turning the stereo up loud enough that the sound of Sam beating himself up is drowned out by screaming lyrics.

It's relatively peaceful, if he ignores the fact that his brother's busy trying to assign the weight of the world onto his own shoulders. Dean's fingers tighten again and he opens his mouth to say something stupid, something that'll at least get Sam pissed at him instead of himself.

Then Sam looks out the window and says lowly, "Train."

Dean reflexively looks, and, yeah, there's a train. Big old rusty thing, chugging along ahead of them like some kind of creepy ass bug. He squints a little into the sun's glare to make out the engine, miles ahead of them. "I'm amazed by your observation skills sometimes, Sammy," pops out of his mouth before he even thinks about it, sounding more sarcastic than he really wanted it to.

It's the first time in a week that Sam's shown any kind of interest in anything other than Jess's killer.

"Whatever. Shut up, dude," Sam says back. His eyes are watching the train with a faint hint of that old interest and Dean's about to do something stupid. Or awesome, depending on how you think of it.

"Hey, remember that old argument we used to have?" he asks before Sam can clamp back up.

Sam doesn't answer for long enough that Dean's almost sure he's dropped off into another nightmare just to avoid talking to him, which is _harsh,_ to say the least. Was a time when Sammy couldn't wait to tell him all about the freaky shit going on in his head.

Then his brother mutters, "Trains are better," like he can't help it.

Dean's reaching out to pet the dashboard before the words have even finished coming out of Sam's mouth. "Don't listen to him, baby. I know you're better than a train any day, any time." He takes his eyes off the road long enough to raise his eyebrows at Sam. "Wanna make a bet?"

"No," Sam says decisively, and goes back to brooding. Or, at least, that's what Dean assumes he's trying to do, but it's kind of hard when he suddenly rams the gas pedal into the floor and Sam flails to catch himself before he hits his head on the dashboard. He eases up a second later, still going well into the 80s, and listens to Sam mumble under his breath.

"I bet," Dean says conversationally, "That I can outrace that train in less than two minutes. You owe me three hours of brood-free silence when I do it. Three. Hours." Dean holds his fingers up to demonstrate, purposefully waving four instead of three until Sam snorts and reaches out to fold one down.

Ah, there's a hint of Dean's little brother peeking through the gloom. Sam almost smiles, turning his face away to watch as they slowly (really, really slowly. Dean hopes Sam knows that his two minutes don't officially start until he accepts the bet) catch up to the train. "What happens when your car breaks down from the strain?" Sam asks a second later.

Okay, there's only so much slack he's willing to cut his little brother before he has to shoot him. "Blasphemy!" Dude, his car is so much better than a rusty ass train. Hands down.

Sam's mouth is curling as he floors the gas pedal, the first smile Dean's seen all week, and he laughs and pushes the Impala faster.


	2. all hell breaks loose au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Hell Breaks Loose fix-it type coda. Extremely AU after season 3 hit, but was written in the summer between seasons.

In June, they're still recovering from a clusterfuck of a job in May.

Dean moves slow enough that he feels like a freakin' granny; Sam's got long wounds on his back that are only now starting to scar over. That's not really the problem though, because they're still alive and the motherfucking _harpies_ aren't. No, the problem is that they took the job in New Mexico before the heat turned brain-melting and now they're stuck crabby, itchy, and healing, in a goddamn oven.

As soon as they can sit comfortably in the Impala, they're hightailing it to cooler states.

It's so hot that Sam's got his head out the window like a particularly huge, floppy eared dog. He bitches constantly about the Impala's busted air conditioner (it's never worked right after Sam _let the semi total his baby_ , which is usually enough to shut him up on that subject), the fact that Dean only ever buys soda and not water, and the way the black paint seems to absorb every stray "sunbeam."

He's a prissy bitch to be around.

Dean rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses and turns the music up loud enough to hurt his ears. He keeps an eye out for every river, pond, creek, and stream and doesn't say a word when Sam's directions take them fifty miles from their destination in the pursuit of them; it's worth it to slide from the Impala's baking interior into crusty water.

Dean doesn't obsessively check the scarred over, fatal wound in Sam's back anymore than Sam keeps a running tally of days in Dad's journal. They're good at ignoring shit, and when Dean's being a little too obvious while Sam's splashing around in the water, well, Dean doesn't say a word when he finds suspiciously smudged papers with three-hundred-some-odd little marks and the words, "wasn't worth it, wasn't worth it," written over and over again.

The water's good for cooling down and the day doesn't seem quite so exhausting.

Of course, afterwards Sam whines about being dirty, but Dean figures he can't win them all.

* * *

Ellen calls them a week before Halloween, right when Sam's starting to slip into that funk that drove Dad to booze every year. A case is just what they need to take their minds off things.

Dean's grateful for it; he doesn't like Sam drunk any more than he enjoyed Dad being two sheets to the wind, but at the same time, it's kind of weird. Jack-o'-lanterns have always meant a few days/weeks (sometimes even a month, when they'd gotten older) to themselves while Dad drank the demon away.

It's not until he's got the phone up to his ear and is jotting down information that he realizes Ellen's voice is wobbling all over the freakin' place.

"Ellen? What's wrong?" Sam pauses in the middle of packing both their bags, looks up to narrow his eyes and mouth, "what?" at him. Dean ignores the question and points towards a shirt half-buried under the motel towels they're going to be stealing while he waits for her answer.

She doesn't say anything for long enough that Dean takes the phone away from his ear and checks to see if it's dropped the call; he has to ask her to repeat herself when she's in the middle of a sentence by the time he raises it again.

"Jo's missin'," Ellen says, like it's actually, physically hurting her to voice it, "Last I heard from her, she was workin' a possession case right around here. Now, I'm not for sure whether or not it's got anything to do with her, but I'd appreciate it if you boys went and took a look."

The case has everything to do with Jo. It takes Sam less than an hour to figure out where she's holing up and Dean doesn't ask if it's because he's had this particular demon in his head before, but he wants to. He also wishes the Colt had an extra bullet, special just for her, because she's a whore-faced bitch who needs to go _down._  
  
Not Jo. The demon that's playing around in her at the moment. She's possessed, spitting venom as much as she possibly can and it doesn't take a genius to figure out just which demon is nosing around inside her.

Dean doesn't take much pleasure in stripping her down to check for the binding link he _knows_ Meg has stashed somewhere, and he likes it even less when he has to hold Jo's legs down so Sam can burn the link open. She's gonna have one fuck all of a scar on her inner thigh when this is all over. He tries not to feel guilty about that.

They'd taped her mouth shut this time, before starting the ritual, and Meg goes screaming back to hell as soon as Sam finishes the exorcism.

Dean hopes that she fucking stays down there this time.

They hustle Jo into Bobby's house three days later. Dean herds her into the house without touching her and Sam endures her distrustful, teary stares when he's got to support her. Jo's tired and heartsore, hasn't said a word to either him or his brother. She flinches away from the both of them like they're the ones responsible for Meg coming after her, and maybe they are, but they're also the ones who got her free.

Dean refuses to feel guilty for that.

She falls into her mama like water; Dean has to look away while Ellen fusses over her and gets her to bed.

Sam's holed up with Bobby, going over books and rituals, when Ellen finally sidles out from Bobby's backroom.

"She's beat down," she says bluntly. Dean nods to her; he knows the look. None of them have mentioned it, but they can all see it. Jo's got that look in her eyes, the one hunters sometimes get when they've barely survived and are too horror stricken to go on hunting.

"She'll be okay," Dean tells her. Tells her; he wishes it were true. Not all the victims survive possession as well as Sammy did. "She's tough."

"My Jo's got nothing left right now and I'm not sure that's ever gonna change," Ellen corrects, "But she's alive, and I've got you and your brother to thank for that." She steps forward and enfolds him in a flannel-y hug that makes him extremely uncomfortable.

He catches his mind wondering if she's screwing Bobby or just staying with him because she's got nowhere else to go.

Sam's quiet on the drive out, watching the gold leaves whiz by. Dean knows how he feels.

* * *

Both of them are agitated and antsy when Christmas rolls around.

Dean can't stand being cold (just his fucking luck they're in the northern states in winter and the southern states in summer,) and Sam looks at him and sees death. It makes for an awesome combination.

"Present," Dean says, curt, and hands over the knife he picked up for Sam a few weeks ago. It's sharp and curving, perfect for the kind of chopping cuts Sam favors in close quarters and a bunch of other things, if the seller had been telling the truth. It doesn't even really matter if he wasn't; man can never have too many knives.

Sam disappears with it out the front door a minute later, so he's hoping that means, "Thanks for the knife, Dean! As soon as I'm done being an emo bitch, I'll come back in and maybe offer to wax the Impala for the next four months," instead of, "I hate this. I'm going to go throw it in the dumpster, thanks. You're a sucktacular big brother."

The door slams back open with a blast of cold, cold air. Sam's suspiciously knife free; Dean lets the hurt roll right the hell off his back, because there's also a suspiciously festive looking package in his brother's hands.

"Hey. I got you something," Sam says like it isn't obvious. Man, sometimes he worries about his brother's intelligence.

Sam tosses a package at him, something squishy and not weapon-like. The hell?

Weapons are the gifts that just keep on giving. Anything else? Is just shitty gift-giving. Sam knows that. He gives his brother a firm, half-disbelieving look and turns the squishy, crappily wrapped package over in his hands.

The wrapping job is shit. The few times they'd done Christmas over the years, Dean'd been the one doing all the gift wrapping; Sammy would bring him his present, some stupid little thing he'd found in the yard or made in school, and Dean would have to wrap it and pretend to be surprised a few days later. Good times.

Sam is clearly rolling his eyes from across the great bed divide. "You know, you'd figure out what's in it a lot sooner if you actually opened it, Dean."

"Oh, I'm savoring the anticipation, Sammy." He turns it over to find the nearest open edge anyway, because Sam might be shit at wrapping, but he makes up for it in the sheer amount of tape he seems to have used. Dean glares flatly at his brother and dares him to say anything when he finally has to flip his knife out and wriggle it under the tape.

Somewhere? Dad is rolling over in his grave at the flagrant disuse of an expertly sharpened knife. The tape leaves sticky residue all over his nice sharp knife, dooming it to repeated sharpening sometime in the near future.

Dean stares at his present and tries not to gag.

"You... got me a sweater?"

It's blue and it has a giant snowman on it getting hugged by these demented looking kids. There are hideous Christmas trees dancing along the sleeves and hem. Dean wants to gouge his eyes out just looking at it. "You got me the sweater from _Christmas hell_ as a present."

Sam nods and looks earnest. "You hate the cold, man. And it was the last thing in stock."

Dean can't tell whether he's being seriously helpful (in which case? he's pretty much doomed to wearing the sweater at least once before it has an unfortunate accident on a hunt) or if he's playing the world's cruelest prank. "There's a reason it was still there, little brother." Please let it be a prank.

He pinches two corners of the thing and picks it up. Multiple things drop out of the bottom of it at the same time that Sam just cracks right the fuck up.

"Merry Christmas, dude," Sam says as he pokes through the things that had come from his hell-sweater.

Dean distractedly mutters back and flicks the sweater to the ground in disgust. A lighter, two replacement cassettes for the ones that the Impala had seen fit to eat within the last month, and a switchblade are sitting in the remains of the wrapping paper.

Also, maybe Sam just is the best pain in the ass little brother ever.

His brother's playing with the kukri knife when Dean looks up again, instead of flipping though books and mumbling to himself. He's testing the balance and running his thumb across the edge, getting a feel for the weapon, and Dean has to pat himself on the back. He picks out awesome presents.

The next day Sam goes back to obsessively researching the miracle plan he's somehow concocted in his scary-ass brain.

Dean goes outside to get coffee and sneaks a snowball in when he comes back. A snowball might actually be kind of misleading, Dean thinks, because what he really does is take one of Sam's giant-sized hoodies, stuff it full of snow, pat it into a vaguely round shape, and dump it over Sam's head when his brother is busy making sure his fruffy coffee is actually fruffy coffee.

"Heh," he tells Sam, when his brother slowly stands up and turns to glare bloody death at him, "Snowball fight?"

They're both covered in snow an hour later, pretty much white from head to toe. Sam's laughing so hard he's snorting and Dean will never admit it, but he might actually be crying icy tears of laughter. It's freezing and there's only four months left (which he's not thinking about so much as he's worrying about how much sleep Sam isn't getting), but it's been long enough since they cut loose and had some fun that he's almost giddy with it.

Though he'll kill anyone that ever calls him giddy. He's not a girl.

He's pretty sure the townies think that the abominable snowman visited them the day after Christmas; if he didn't know better, he'd swear his giant, snow covered brother was a supernatural monster too.

* * *

They go back to Cold Oak two days before Dean's debt comes due.

It's April, but it's still ball-numbingly cold in South Dakota, so they're huddled on the Impala's rapidly cooling hood to keep what little heat they've got. The new green leaves on the trees all around them are _mocking him_ , he's sure. Jesus. He's almost considering digging out the hell-sweater just to add an extra layer on.

He's never liked the cold.

Dean's curiously okay with it, his impending doom, not the goddamn cold, whether or not Sam's plan works; his little brother is alive and if he doesn't mind sneaking into Mexico or Canada, he's got his whole life ahead of him, hunting free. What's the rest of eternity in hell compared to that?

Sam's enough of a nervous wreck for the both of them anyway.

He keeps leaning towards Dean, like he's looking for contact, and then pulling away when he realizes that he's not twelve anymore. Dean can't figure out whether he should call him on it and make a joke, or pull him in. Sammy's also opening and closing his hands, scratching his palms hard enough to raise welts in the cold every time he does, and Dean finally presses his mouth together and leans over.

Sam looks at him, all dewy dark eyes and an unhappy curl of the mouth; he looks like his dog is about to get run over (well, okay, so his brother is probably going to go _to hell_ in twenty minutes if their shaky plan gets fucked, but Dean's _okay with that._ He really, really is). Dean watches out of the corner of his eye as his brother flexes his fists again and sighs.

"Wanna hold my hand, dude?" he asks, "One time offer, mostly free of gay jokes," Dean waggles his hand in front of Sam's face and isn't surprised when Sam bats it away with an eye roll. But his brother smiles a little, quickly repressed, and that's all he was aiming for.

Sam's quick, unthinking, "Go to hell, man," pretty much ruins that though.

It's quiet; there's five minutes left by his wristwatch when Sam speaks again.

"Dean?" Sam's voice comes out sounding about three years old, scared of the monster under the bed even though Dad had ringed it with salt and Dean had patiently threaded iron beads onto a bracelet his brother could wear. It makes a lump rise in his throat. Sammy continues on, still staring off into the middle of the crossroad, "Man, is that offer still open?"

"What, the hand-holding one?" His little brother ducks his head and tries to curl into himself, so Dean raises an eyebrow and purses his lips. Seriously? There is no fucking way Sam is actually serious. Except for the part where he really is a ginormous, sparkly little girl and would ask to hold hands when a demon comes to take his brother's soul. "You really are a twelve year old girl, aren't you?"

"If you're gonna be a jerk about it-"

"Gimme your hand, princess. Jesus, the things I do for you..." Sam's hand is bigger than his, has been for years. It's also cold and there's a smear of blood that's making his own skin kind of clammy, but he's not going to mention that.

Three minutes left.

Sam takes a deep breath and curls his fingers tighter in Dean's grip. "Dean-"

Dean quite seriously doesn't want to hear it. "Christ, just because we're holding hands? Does not mean it's time for a heart to heart, dear diary moment. Grow a dick, Sammy."

"You're such a friggin' jerk."

"Love you too, bitch."

He thinks for a second that Sam's gonna press on anyway, but he just grips his hand tight enough to turn it white. Dean presses his lips shut so he doesn't say that he's going to need that hand to be functional in a few hours; it's entirely possible he's not.

He wiggles his fingers a little bit to try to ease blood into them, before giving up and clamping down on Sam's hand just as tight.

They wait.

* * *

On Sammy's 25th birthday, they're in Cancún, sipping margaritas, with two lloronas under their belts and a sayona they're waiting until nightfall to dig up. There's a possible tunda ("Dude. She _farts on the food_?!") two days south of them in a rural little nothing village they're planning on checking out after they finish with the sayona.

Between the two of them, they know a handful of useful Spanish and a handful of very specialized words. Sam knows enough of the language to understand when people are talking about ghosts; Dean knows enough to understand when a woman is propositioning him.

It works out pretty well, he thinks.

Sam's bitchy about the heat, because he's always bitchy about something. Dean wears sunglasses a lot, so that he can watch the bikini clad asses without fear of righteous feminine anger. Sam teases him about finding a grey hair before he even turns thirty and Dean glances at his brother's back when he strips to take a dip and doesn't feel like flinching.

He figures that sometimes? You really can win everything. It's an awesome feeling.


	3. magnificent seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set directly after Magnificent Seven.

Sam's face is buried in a book again.

Dean tosses his keys in the air twice, fumbles the second catch on purpose to see if Sam's even paying the slightest bit of attention to him. He's not. Dean bends over and retrieves his keys with a grimace.

Sam's been on this holy crusade since the Big 7; Dean's not going to feel guilty for it, dammit. He'd said what needed to be said and he's not going to let Sam drop down dead just because he thinks Dean isn't entitled to be selfish every now and again.

"Sammy, come on, man, let's go do something. Enjoy the time I've got left, huh?" That would have gotten a smile out of Sam less than a week ago, even if it would have been something slightly sickly and wobbly around the edges. Now Sam just wedges himself more firmly into the corner his bed makes with the wall and shakes his shaggy head.

"You go ahead. I'm gonna," Sam doesn't even look up, doesn't even finish his sentence. He doesn't have to.

"Dude, I'm not gone yet!" Dean finally says, face twisting in serious annoyance. He liked it better when Sam was being overly solicitous to him. At least then he'd been able to get laid while knowing exactly where his little brother was if he'd wanted to look out the window and check.

"No," Sam retorts. For a second, Dean thinks he's just telling him no, he's not gonna go out tonight, and for the record? He's totally prepared to throw Sam over his shoulder and force him to have fun if he's just going to be a bitch about it.

He steps forward to do just that.

Sam's fingers go white on the edges of the book the instant he gets even slightly closer, and Dean stops and really looks at him for the first time since. Since a lifetime ago (Sam's lifetime). He looks worse than he had laid out on that threadbare mattress in Cold Oak; he's grey tinged, dark circles under his eyes and his cheekbones are starting to stick out enough that Dean vaguely thinks he's gonna end up slicing his pillows to ribbons. Dean starts to get a terrible feeling in his gut.

"Just. Go away, alright? You're right, you've got 348 days left," of course Sam knows how many days he's got, he probably knows the hours too, and the only reason he doesn't know the seconds is because his watch doesn't display them, "Live your life, go screw a hooker, have bad cholesterol, be selfish, whatever."

Sam's nostrils flare when he looks back down at the book. Dean blinks at him, wants to smile and make a joke, but can't. "I told you what would happen if you-"

"You're entitled to be selfish, right, Dean?" Sam interrupts, turns his page and doesn't look up. Dean thinks he looks like he's wasting away, like there's a succubus feeding on him and he needs to purify his brother, only there's nothing in there but the information Dean gave him, eating away at him like Dad's secret had eaten away at him. He fucking well refuses to feel guilty for Sam being alive.

"Yeah, that's what I said, wasn't it?" Dean says. He scrubs a hand across his face, tries to keep the sick feeling from showing. "So sit back, relax, let's go get a beer."

Sam draws his knees up, rests the book against them and doesn't look at Dean again. "Don't expect me to be selfless if you're not going to be."


	4. no rest for the wicked, take one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of two codas I wrote the night of No Rest for the Wicked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is cracked out and has a hellhound named Bon Jovi, you've been warned.

Sam keeps the hellhound that kills Dean.

At first, it's just because he can _see it_. Lilith has knocked something loose in his skull, and there's the hound, panting by Dean's head, watching him. It's big and black with a single white spot over one of its red eyes and it has claws like a lion and jaws like an unholy mixture of a pit bull and an alligator.

Sam cradles Dean's skull in his palms and blankly stares at the hellhound. He shouldn't be seeing it. It shouldn't still be here, it should be running after its master, ready to kill more people who've sold their souls like _Dean_ ; his breath hitches and he starts crying again, leans his head against Dean's forehead and tries not to inhale the smell of blood and voided bowels.

When his eyes are dry again, he looks up, expecting it to be gone, but it's still there. It stares back, red eyes narrow and hateful with Dean's blood splattered all over its hide.

He hates it.

He takes it with him anyway.

It has nothing to do with the fucked up notion that if it _has_ something of Dean's inside it somewhere. Really. And Sam is completely and utterly balanced in the head when he carries Dean's body out, past the demons who shy away from the hound trotting behind him.

With the hellhound slinking behind him, Sam can see what Dean was talking about, all the hate and ugliness and foul what the fuck are those staring out of the possessed faces around him. The hellhound gives a low, mournful sounding howl when one of them eases a little closer to him, sinks its razor teeth into a demonic leg and shakes hard enough that Sam can hear flesh and bone separating.

He doesn't tell Bobby about it and Bobby can't see it anyway. It jumps into the front seat of the Impala, settles down next to Sam because Sam had sent it one foul glare when it sniffed at Dean's boots and tried to climb into the backseat with him.

"You touch him again and I'll find out whether demon killing knives kill hellhounds too," he tells it.

It whines low in its throat and drops its head onto Sam's thigh. Sam's so far past his emotional threshold that he finds it comforting, hellhound's affection with his dead brother in the backseat of the only thing his brother left him. He scratches at the hound's head with his fingers, doesn't pay attention to the fact that he's smearing more of Dean's blood along its muzzle.

When the hellhound doesn't disappear after two days, a motel room, and Missouri reluctantly telling him how to knit a dead body back together and keep it in stasis, Sam turns to look at it. "Don't you have places to be?" he asks.

He knows he looks like he's talking to empty space. He doesn't care. It's easier for crazy people to get information than it is for floppy haired nice boys.

The hellhound stares at him with its red eyes and lolls a black tongue out of the side of its mouth. It follows behind him on foot if he tries to leave it, running fast enough that it can keep up with the Impala like a mini Terminator (Dean would have loved it), so Sam stops trying to ditch it.

It comes in handy when he goes after demons, working his way from black eyed lackeys to red eyed deal makers to purple eyed elites. The demons, it turns out, are just as scared of hellhounds as people are.

Sam takes to banishing the ones he can, with either the knife or an exorcism, and letting the hellhound handle anything that tries to sneak up on him. It's surprisingly good at it, and sometimes, just for a second, Sam can forget it's an evil creature watching his back and not his brother.

After a while, he starts calling it Bon Jovi. He thinks Dean would appreciate it. Bobby catches him talking to it once or twice and gives him the kind of half-pitying look that Sam imagines he gets a lot from people who thinks he's a lunatic on the streets.

They catch up to Lilith two months after Dean's gone to hell. Bon Jovi howls when they get close, whimpers and whines when they get closer still, and finally falls silent when they find a playground with a little girl on the swing, slowly pushing herself with one dainty, white shoe clad foot.

Her face splits into a wide grin as soon as she sees him. "Hi, Sam," she calls.

"Lilith," Sam says back, neutrally. He's got fire crawling under his skin, the barest hint of what he wants to do to this demon. The hellhound sits at his feet with a sigh not that different from a regular dog's, if you discounted the sulfur smell.

Sam's gotten used to it.

Lilith keeps smiling. She turns her head to look at the shaking woman behind her and trills, "That's my Sam. He's really tall, huh? You can leave us alone now, I don't think I need you anymore, auntie."

The woman behind Lilith suddenly goes stiff and then limp, neck turned at an impossible angle. Sam can't even find it in himself to flinch, a trail of dead bodies behind him miles wide while he searched for this particular demon, hiding from him since _that day._

"You have a hellhound!" Lilith murmurs when Sam doesn't say anything. She tilts her head to the side, both small hands clutching the chain of the swing, and pouts. "That's not really fair, Sam."

Sam drops a hand onto Bon Jovi's head and doesn't flinch when it nets him a lick. It feels like fire on his skin, too hot and eating away at it, sulfur grinding into the wounds. "A lot of things aren't fair."

"That's mine," Lilith says with the petulance of a small child. She lets go of the swing chain long enough to crook a hand at the hellhound. "Come back to mommy."

Bon Jovi yawns and shows off two perfect rows of razor teeth, like a shark. It looks up into Sam's face, red eyes fawning, before it lets its tongue fall over its teeth and just _stares_ at Lilith.

"Doesn't look like it wants to belong to you anymore." Bon Jovi turns to scratch suddenly at his side, and Lilith jumps about a mile on her swing.

Sam says, "I want Dean back."

"Impossible," Lilith declares. She pushes herself on the swing, smiling down at her shoes. "Would you like to kiss me again before I kill you, Sam?"

"I wasn't asking," Sam says. "I have a weapon that can kill you. And a dog that can keep your 'soul,'" he sneers when he says it, because regardless of what Ruby had once claimed, he's never believed demons have souls, "From escaping. You should probably do what I say."

Bon Jovi heaves itself to its feet and takes a few quick, liquid steps towards Lilith. Its eyes are bright, glowing; Sam can see the reflection of them in the way the grass has turned a strange color and in the way that Lilith blanches.

"For a little while," she concedes gracefully. Her eyes roll white.

He gets back into the Impala, Bon Jovi scrabbling over him to sit in the passenger seat and thrust his head out of the window. Sam lets him. He carefully doesn't look at the body in the backseat, the one he's been carting around like a lunatic for two months.

The body stirs. Sam's hands go white around the steering wheel and Bon Jovi's whine sends up goosebumps and makes his stomach turn over in his belly. The body in his backseat goes right on moving around, sitting up, cursing and whining.

"Sam?"

Sam loosens his fingers, feels tears prick the back of his eyes. "Yeah?"

"Hellhound?"

"Mine."

There's a lengthy pause. Bon Jovi stops watching the man outside like it wants to eat him and turns to give Sam a puzzled, red glare.

"Dude," Dean says. He sounds completely and utterly weirded out. Sam flicks a glance into the rearview mirror and finds that he's looking at Bon Jovi. "Is that the fucker that _killed me?_ "

Bon Jovi tilts his massive head over the back of the seat. "Bon Jovi says it's sorry," Sam translates numbly.

There's a considering silence from the backseat. "You named a hellhound Bon Jovi?"

Sam nods. He can't say, "I missed you, dammit," and he can't say, "He's been keeping me company while you were getting tortured in hell."

He lets his head fall on the steering wheel and starts crying. He figures he's earned it.


	5. no rest for the wicked, take two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the not so happy version of post S3 Sam.

When Dean dies, Sam curls his head onto his brother's shoulder and cries. He can feel the demons milling out front, whisper scratches of conversation and sulfur frustration, and he's pretty sure that the hellhound is still in the room with him, but he needs to cry.

Then he stands up and walks out the front door.

He takes the knife with him, shoves it through the belly of the only demon _stupid enough_ to come at him after Lilith ran, rips it out to spill guts while the demon shudders orange in its death throes. The rest of the demons part to let him pass, their black eyes wide and shining and afraid.

Sam doesn't stop to look for Bobby. He slides into the Impala

It's easier this time around. Not losing Dean, because even after a hundred Tuesday's, one Wednesday, and a Friday (happy birthday to me, some small part of Sam thinks hysterically), it's never going to be easy.

It's easier to cut out that part of himself that listened when Dean told him it wasn't worth his soul. It's easier to cut out the humanity and let the hunter take its place again, even if this time what he's hunting is Lilith and a _way in_ instead of the Trickster.

He has a cache of weapons and nothing left to lose, Ruby's knife still flecked with gore on the jacket he'd carefully lain on the seat, Dean's amulet wrapped so tightly around his fingers he's afraid of losing circulation.

And, this is the important thing, as far as the _fucking demons_ should be concerned, he has himself.

It's more than enough. Sam sets out to prove it, and, if in the meantime, he feels something writhing just under his flesh, something bright and powerful and _white_ , like Lilith's eyes, it's not fucking important next to Dean.

* * *

His body feels weird.

That's the first thing Dean thinks when he flits back into consciousness, and then, _what the fuck, I don't have a body, I have a soul_. Which hurts like demons have been shredding holes in it for fun (which they have) and he curls into a ball of soul and hopes they go the fuck away, just for a little while, leave him alone with the Sammy in his memories before they try to take that from him too.

Only he can't shake the feeling that his body _feels weird._

He lifts his hand, mildly surprised that he can, because the demons aren't big on the whole moving thing while they torture your soul into tiny, tasty pieces. Stares at the way the fingers are longer than they should be, the palms wider.

Not his body.

"Your old one was too fucked up to save," a very calm, very flat voice tells him from somewhere to the left. "It was getting pretty rank, dude."

Dean would like to whip around. But his _soul hurts_ and his body isn't his body, so the best he manages is a sideways shuffle that makes it so he can look to see who (what) it is.

His brother's sitting on the floor next to him. At least, Dean's going to assume it's his brother until he's proven otherwise and his heart rises in his soul (weird as fuck to think, but he _does not_ have a body anymore, the demons had shown Sam burning it) at the sight.

"Sammy?" he rasps out. Holy shit, that's not his voice. He touches a hand to his throat, but it feels _weird_ , not right. He's tempted to think that the demons have moved past shredding him physically and gone for the mindfuck.

Then he stops fucking thinking at all because he gets a good look at his brother and he's... he's _wrong._

Sam's eyes have never been that _pale_ , washed out hazel bleached almost to colorlessness. His pupils are the only dark thing in his eyes and it's fucking creepy. Dean catches something pale shimmering in, under, Sam's face, and stares.

"Hi, Dean," Sam says. There's something shifting just under Sam's face, something _demon not quite what the hell is that_ just below the surface. It's like looking at a mask sliding over an oil slick, rainbows and brightness and black, but that's not _demon_ , no matter how much his flayed open instincts are telling him it is.

He doesn't know what the fuck it is.

Dean finds out that bile feels pretty damn weird in a new body. "What did you _do_ , Sam?" he asks helplessly. Please, let this be just another form of torture, more wounds for his soul, blood and viscera and bone dripping from him in hell.

Sam tilts his head to the side, that _not as ugly as a demon, what the hell, what the hell, it's_ _ **shining**_ thing under his skin tilting with it until Dean has to close his eyes and look away. When he opens them again, Sam's still watching, face still over the thing under it, eyes reflecting the street light in a flat white glare.

"I kept my promise," Sam says matter-of-factually. He twirls Ruby's knife through his fingers, lightning fast, before he adds, "No more deals, but I got you out."

 _Lilith_ had white eyes, Dean thinks. All the demons in hell had been black eyed and uglier than sin, taking their turns ripping pieces off of him that they could lick and chew on, Dean feeling it even after they'd swallowed and come back for more.

His soul's ragged and Sam's more than halfway to soul-less. This isn't how he envisioned returning from hell, all those lovely _months days hours how long has it been?_ moments he'd been trying to forget that the demons were feeding off of him, slowly turning him into one of them.

Something dangles in front of his face. He can feel it even with his eyes closed. Dean snaps back into focus, huddling his soul down tight in this new body that he doesn't know where the hell Sam got it from. He keeps his eyes closed, because he doesn't want to look at Sam, not quite human anymore, sliding nauseatingly into the demonic because he never could take good advice and run with it.

"Here," Sam mutters.

Dean opens his aching eyes when his brother drops something over his head, familiar, even without his real body. He traces the amulet that's resting on his sternum and looks at Sam with a little quirk of the mouth that's the closest he can come to a smile right now, with _that_ staining Sam white from the inside.

"Kept it for me, huh?" he asks, voice still not right. This is going to take getting used to. If it's real.

No answer.

Sam's staring at him, not blinking those creepy, milky hazel eyes at all. His head's tilted to the side, in the same damn way Dean's noticed demons always tilt when they're trying to understand something, and Dean's throat seizes closed on him. "Sammy?"

Sam's face just... shatters. One second there's that oil slick of _not human not demon something fucking else what are you little brother_ behind the bones of his skull and the next it's just _Sam_ ; too tired, too ragged, too thin.

Dean startles and pulls into himself when Sam touches him, wraps around him. He's soundin' like a broken record here, but it feels fucking weird, having someone else touch him without trying to rip pieces off in the process and his damn soul...

His damn soul starts singing sappy love songs inside him, big hair ballads, as soon as Sam curls against his shoulder and buries his face in his neck.

"I couldn't," Sam mumbles into his brand spanking old skin. "I couldn't just leave you in hell, Dean."

Dean splays his hand on the back of Sam's skull. It feels real under his fingertips, like this all has, and if this had been his imagination, or, hell, the demons having fun, they wouldn't have given him a Sam that _broke_ without him. They wouldn't have.

Dean wouldn't have believed it. He can, however, believe his own fucking soul, all but shooting goddamn rainbows inside him at how close Sam is. Yeah. There's a soul in his brother still, his and not a demon's, and Dean's willing to work with that for now.

He doesn't have much room to talk. He's pretty sure his own soul is spread out inside, oh, about fifty or so demons.

"I get it, Sam," Dean says.

They'll deal with Sam's eyes and his powers and his _not right under the skin_ tomorrow. Come to think of it, they'll deal with Dean's impending freak-out (he can feel it, lovely and full of pain and _he has less than half of a soul now, he knows it_ because the demons had been eating it and did that mean he was partially demon himself now?) later too.

For right now, Dean's eyes fasten on his little brother's bowed head and he just drinks him in.


	6. lazarus rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone challenged me to write a Lazarus Rising coda that explained why Ruby was naked in Sam's room, sans using sex as an explanation.

It takes her two days to find Sam. Not that he's particularly hard to find, 'cause Sam lights up the whole damn world like a star going nova, but she's a little beat to hell from Lilith and finding a body worth possessing, one with pretty hair and pouty lips and just enough hip to make Dean keep glancing down, well, that's hard.

It sort of feels like she's got a Lilith sized hole keeping her from being useful. By the time she finds her next body, heals enough to possess it, and puts on decent clothes, you'd have to be blind, death, dumb, and human _not_ to know that Lilith was running scared.

Served the bitch right.

* * *

"Hey," she says. She glances down at the white knuckled grip he's got on her knife and takes a couple prudent steps back.

"Go away, Ruby," Sam says softly.

The place he's chosen to bury Dean is nice. Classy, in a kind of nothing alive around for miles way. The amount of shit he's already put up to defend the body is kind of makin' her skin twitch, so she takes another healthy step backwards.

"You want to brood in peace, Sam? I get that, but right now is probably _not_ the best time for you to go all emo. Lilith's on the run."

The glare Sam sends her could peal paint. "What good are you?" he asks, lowdown and dangerous. He braces his hands on his knees and pushes himself to his feet, towering over her.

She can't really take another step back, wouldn't even if she could. She's not scared of Sam. "Well, I can actually _track her_ ," she says lightly, "Which is more than what you're doing."

"You couldn't even-" Sam cuts himself off and laughs, one hand going up to clutch at the side of his head. He sounds like she feels, like he's swallowed a moutful of shrapnel and it's busy tearing him up on the inside.

Good. Might actually make him smart now, get rid of all those high and mighty morals.

"Oh, that's right, blame it on me," she sneers back at him. She almost wants to spit on Dean's grave because if anyone's to blame for all this shit, it's Dean. This wouldn't have happened if Dean had actually let her teach Sam like she was supposed to.

But blamin' her dead charge's brother is probably a one way ticket to, well, death via her own goddamn pointy weapon, so. Go for the next best thing.

"Listen, Sam, I'm not the one who _waited_ a whole goddamn year before I decided I _maybe_ should try out that demon psychic thing."

Sam's hand tightens on her knife. Ruby just gives him a wide, nasty smile and lets her true self shine out of this meat puppet's eyes. "So, yeah. Blame me. But we all know who's fault this _really_ is."

Oh, she loves a boy with a guilt complex.

* * *

_Insert Ruby and Sam hunting hijinks here. I never got around to doing so, sorry. Picks up again in the first episode._

* * *

"Where're my clothes?" she asks Sam.

He stands there holding the door for a second, then closes it with a sigh. "In my duffle. You're not the same girl, Ruby, they're not gonna fit."

"Do _you_ know anything about girl's clothes, Spanky? No? Then shut up." She throws her hair behind her shoulders, glad that it's _long_ again. She's gotten used to a lot of shit from this century, likes the slinky tops and the too tight bottoms, but she's never going to understand the reason women cut their hair so short.

Sam tosses his bag to her.

She rips her shirt off, because it's _disgusting_. Her new body'd been too busy hacking up a lung and shooting herself up to bother fighting off a demon. Still. _Gross._ "I'm startin' to see why your brother was so annoyed with you all the time, Sam. Anyone ever tell you you should leave a note or _call_ before you go splitsville on them?"

"It's not like you can't find me," he says. He's scrubbing his face with his hands when she looks up. They're leaving tracks of dirt and decaying human slop in their wake. "The demons-"

"The ones _we've_ been tracking."

A huge sigh. Ruby smirks behind her hair and paws through the freakishly neat rolls of Sam's clothes. Honestly, Sam's so easy sometimes.

She finds one of her undershirts and throws it on the bed. One down. Five or six pieces to go.

"The demons _we've_ been tracking suddenly took off. And Dean's grave's been... disturbed."

Yeah, she figured that's what the cadaver smell was from. Well, she was _hoping_ that it was from something huge and Dean related and not from Sam deciding he'd had enough with trying with the live ones.

"Disturbed how?" she asks. She finds a pair of panties and slings them at Sam's head just for the hell of it.

He doesn't even look at her before he tosses them back. Spoilsport. "There's no Dean in it."

Oh, ew. She can give him about twenty different reasons there might be for a damned's body to be dug up, but she's pretty sure he knows most of them. If it's a human who did it, they're gonna be inside out and strung up by their intestines before they know what's coming for them.

"And?" she asks. Gotta be more than that. She finds her bra, fuckin' finally, and unwraps it from around Sam's socks.

"Trees were flattened. Dead animals all over the place." There's a noise like he's picking at the dirt under his nails. "Whatever it is..."

"Pretty bad freakin' mojo," she says.

He's looking at the ceiling when she looks up, which she thinks is sort of sweet in a misguided way. She doesn't have a bra on, but it's not like these are her knockers and she's nice enough that her host is taking a long, long nap instead of watching the proceedings.

Her damn boobs aren't fitting into her bra cups. She'd _thought_ she'd picked somebody with the same measurements as the last body, but apparantly not. Dammit.

"Yeah," Sam says while she tries to put her boobs in her bra. "I want to know what kind."

He doesn't ask her to go. She's pretty sure he honestly doesn't think she has anything better to do, or anything she _wants_ , and sometimes that chafes pretty damn hard. Sure, she's a demon, but she was human once too.

Still, there are worse overlords to work for, evil or otherwise.

"Get me pizza before I go," she says, giving up on the bra. She's got another one in here, for when she's got bigger boobs than normal, but, dammit, she _likes_ this one. It's pretty. She throws it on Sam's bed and pulls on her undershirt.

"Ruby..."

"No, Sam. Seriously." Ruby puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head, getting used to the swish of heavier, darker hair. "I have puke taste in my mouth right now, my boobs are too big for my favorite bra, and you smell like your decomposing brother. Get me some damn pizza before I go."


	7. the end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick coda written the same night as The End aired. Hardcore suicide attempts in here, though none are described in loving detail. One way Sam said yes to Lucifer in the future (I used this as my "We're all going to Die!" cliche bingo square.)

He says no, and no, and no, and no, in a thousand different ways. Pills don't work; he wakes up clean and well-rested in bed even if he remembers throwing up in the bathtub. Slitting his wrists nets the same results and blowing his brains out just makes Lucifer tut.

"Sam," he says, "Try not to use a bullet next time, alright?"

There'd been a reaper here earlier, he's pretty sure, but she hadn't been fast enough to get him on his way before Lucifer slammed him back into his body. Also, she was dead now, and Sam wonders if breaking more seals is going to do anything to the world.

"Are you listening to me?" Lucifer asks. He drops a hand to Sam's head, prodding at the exit would before rolling him onto his back.

Sam doesn't have the energy to tilt his head away from Lucifer's fingers. They card through his bangs and then press against his forehead, right where he put the bullet. "It's extremely messy. I would prefer if you didn't do it again."

"If I had the Colt, it wouldn't just be messy," Sam whispers. His throat is dry; probably had something to do with the blood loss.

The Devil laughs softly. "Why would I let you have your namesake's gun, Samuel?" he asks. "I want you alive and consenting."

"We're both out of luck, then," Sam says. He closes his eyes, doesn't even twitch when Lucifer's hand smoothes down to mockingly press on his ribcage. The sigils under his skin _burn_ at the touch and Lucifer traces his with one fingernail while Sam tries to get up the energy to roll away.

"Your brother hasn't said yes either," he says. "Stubborn, stubborn Winchester boys. It's why you've always been my favorite."

"Don't talk about Dean," Sam says up at the ceiling.

"Why?" Lucifer asks, "He's obviously not talking to you. Do you know he's here, in Detroit? Sans his pet angel, of course."

Sam wants to open his eyes, but he's _tired_. "Are you threatening him again?"

"Only a little," Lucifer says. He lifts his hand away and Sam's tattoos and carved up ribs finally stop flaring with heat; Lucifer claims it tickles, when he's in a talkative mood. "What would you do to keep your brother safe, Sam?"

"Make a deal with the Devil?" Sam asks. "At this point, I think I'm the only one in my family who hasn't."

"You're a smart boy, Sammy."

"Don't call me Sammy."

The bed dips under Lucifer's weight. "It's only a matter of time," he says. His fingers return to Sam's hair, scraping absently like someone scratching a favored dog; Sam thinks about biting his fingers but can't be bothered to move. His head's pounding. "One of you will say yes. I would prefer it was you; I'm much more pleasant than Michael is. Your brother will live through my rule."

"Nobody lives through an apocalypse," Sam says.

"He'll live longer than anyone else."

"Why do I get the feeling you're lying?"

Lucifer peaceably ruffles his hair and says, "I don't lie, Sam. I believe I've told you this before." The bed creaks as he stands up again. "You should get something to eat. You're beginning to lose weight."

Sam opens his eyes when the _presence_ leaves the room. It's cold and dark without Satan, which he thinks is hilarious, in a dark sort of way. He's tired. Dean's in town, and he makes himself roll over and pick up his phone to scroll through his contacts.

He hasn't changed his phone number in years. He can't say the same for Dean. The last time Sam tried to call his brother, the phone had been disconnected.

He's spent two years alone with only a fallen angel for company and he's going _insane_ , slowly but surely. The last time he woke up from a nightmare, he almost called out for the Devil to keep him company.

He dials the number, just in case, and puts it on speaker so he can listen to the monotone voice explain that his call cannot be completed. He can't do this anymore. He can't. Dean hates him, the world's still ending, no matter what he does, and he just wants to _stop._

There's no heaven for him and hell doesn't want to let him die, and he doesn't know what to do except the obvious.

"Lucifer," Sam says, rolling back into the center of the bed and squeezing his eyes shut.

"Sam?"

"I don't want to know."

He can hear the smile in Lucifer's voice as his hand settles on his hand again, ruffling. Sam can all but hear the _good dooooog_ as he says, "You don't have to be awake, Sam. I'll make sure you have good dreams."

"I don't want to dream either."

"That's fine too."

"Don't hurt Dean." That one comes out more like a plea than a demand.

"There won't be a need. Your brother won't try to hurt me while I'm in you."

"Alright."

The road to hell is paved in good intentions, the way already blazed by a brother willing to die for you but not live with the monster you've become. Sam says yes, and yes, and yes, and whispers thank you when Lucifer gently presses his soul into black sleep.


	8. the end/i believe the children are our future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A combination coda for The End/I Believe the Children Are Our Future. I wanted to write about what happened to Jesse in the future Dean saw.

In 2011, in Alliance, Nebraska, Sam finds a child. He's terrified, throwing up in the grass next to his mother's body, and Zachariah's hovering over him with Ruby's knife; Sam doesn't think twice.

There are lines of right and wrong that he hasn't ever been willing to cross, and whatever the angel wants, whatever this kid's _done_ , Sam's not going to sit by and let him die. He's just a kid.

Dean's not here and Dean hasn't been here in a year, so Sam doesn't even feel bad about reaching in for that seething mess of power. Zachariah goes slamming into the side of the house and the kid comes flying towards Sam, so he can tuck him behind him and away from the corpses in the dirt.

"I've got you," Sam says without taking his eyes off of the angel. "You're safe now, alright? Just close your eyes. It'll be over in a minute."

"Samuel," Zachariah says, "You know not what you do. The child must be-"

There really isn't that much of a difference between the angels and the demons. Not when it comes to possession. The angels laugh at exorcisms, but they scream at invocations, and Sam's used to drawing on the power of Lucifer to get them out of his fucking way.

The kid kind of wails when the world goes white; Sam feels an affectionate hand on the back of his neck right before Zachariah and his vessel are incinerated by light.

It takes a minute for the power to drop down again. Sam shakes his way through it, because humans were never _meant_ to have the power of a fallen angel course through them, and then turns around to drop to his knees next to the kid. "Are you alright?" he asks.

"They said they were angels," the kid cries. "They said..." The kid hiccups and throws up again, a little dribble of bile down his shirt. "Mom said she wanted to meet an angel and I, I don't know what I..."

Sam pulls the kid forward to lean against his shoulder. "It's okay," he says. "You're alright."

"They killed Mom!" the kid wails, "Angels are supposed to, supposed to be good and they killed. They." He stutters off and just kind of breathes into Sam's shirt, hot and opened mouth, and, yeah, Sam finds it's not that hard to let the lie slip out, small and white.

"There's no such thing as angels," he says quietly.

* * *

He takes the kid and Ruby's knife with him when he leaves Alliance. He heads for Chicago.

The knife's got Dean's fingerprints all over, tactic big brother blessing given to an angel to go kill a little boy, and Sam. Sam is sick of trying not to be a monster when the rest of the world is going down the toilet and _his brother sent an angel to kill a child._

If Dean's allowed to be a monster, than so's _he_ and he's sick of saying no to the one person that still has his back.

"My name's Jesse," the kid says when he wakes up. He slides over cautiously to lean against Sam's side while he drives; he still smells like vomit and cold sweat, but he also feels a little like family, like Lucifer purring in happy anticipation in the back of his mind.

Sam watches the sun crest over the trees. "Sam," he says. "Sam Winchester."

* * *

The possession with Lucifer doesn't work like Sam's pretty sure most possessions do. Lucifer lets him have the body pretty much whenever he wants, he feeds Sam his favorite foods, and takes him around the world to show him the wonders.

He always makes sure Sam's asleep for the blood, guts, death, mayhem, and betrayals. Sam really appreciates it.

At night, Sam crawls into bed across from Jesse, who always rolls over and asks, "Are you Sam or the Devil?" and then giggles, high and amused.

Sam swats him with one pillow and buries his face under his other to get some sleep. "Can you stop time for a while?" he mumbles into clean linen. "I need nine hours tonight and Lucifer wants to be somewhere in three."

"Yeah," Jesse says, "Sure."

Sam wakes up in eight hours and wanders outside to stretch, poke a man over where he's caught mid-piss in the alley. Jesse shows up next to him. "Ready?" he asks, smiling, and Sam nods his head and watches the world restart.

* * *

Jesse gets more powerful the older he gets. Around the time that Lucifer snaps his brother's neck, Jesse decides that this shit is for the birds and Sam wakes up in the middle of tall grass.

"What did you do now?" he asks, long suffering.

"The Devil said he wanted to start over," Jesse says. "I just... gave him a hand. He wasn't doing a very good job."

Sam sits up, then has to stand because the grass is _tall_ , and even then he can only barely see over the tops of it. It reminds him of the descriptions of the American prairie, before humanity swept it all away. "All the people?" he asks.

"Gone," the boy mutters. He's coming up on seventeen now, willow thin still, but the power that looks back at Sam is enough to almost make his hair stand on end. Almost. "I figure we can bring back the people we like, you know? Make a real paradise."

The inside of his skull is empty. Sam scratches at the back of it and smiles. "Sure," he says. "Who do you want?"

"I always wanted to meet the X-Men," Jesse says thoughtfully.


	9. I Believe the Children Are Our Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I Believe the Children Are Our Future coda. I wanted Jesse and Sam to talk to each other, even after Jesse disappears.

Sam finds the first note on the mirror the next morning. His eyes are bleary, so it takes him a few seconds to figure out what he's seeing; "I'm really sorry," it says, only the s is kind of wobbly, like someone didn't know whether it should face to the right or the left. He finishes brushing his teeth and pulls it off, spits into the sink as he re-reads it.

Then he flips it over and goes to find a pen.

"You made the right choice for you," he writes on the back, and tapes it back up on the mirror.

It's gone by the time Dean gets up. Sam debates not telling him about it, but there were secrets on top of secrets last year, so he ends up saying, "I think Jesse left me a note this morning," over his coffee.

"Huh," Dean says. "Nothing for me?"

"I don't think so."

"Dude, that's not right."

"Well, you did lie to him."

"So did you!"

"I also told him the truth."

* * *

Just before the antukai's teeth can close over his shoulder, Sam feels the world shift. One minute he's directly under the monster, the next he's two feet away. It looks just as surprised as he feels, right before Dean puts three sanctified bullets into its head.

His brother comes splashing from the shore, swearing loud and uncoordinated as his hands grope under the water.

Sam watches for a few seconds before it dawns on him that Dean's looking for _him_ and he says, "Over here," except it comes out barely a whisper. He's getting sick of supernatural shit choking him.

Dean doesn't ask how he got out from under the antukai.

Sam sits back on his hands and tries to breathe; the water's murky and deeper than it looks, brackish black under the moonlight, and he's a little too appreciative of being able to draw in a lungful of air to question it for the rest of the night.

"Stroke of luck," Dean jokes. He's whitefaced and his hands are shaking a little around the butt of his gun; Sam drags his eyes away from them and tries not to wheeze. "You're so rank, dude, that even the monsters don't want a piece of you."

There's a note on his bed when they get to the motel room. Dean picks it up since Sam's trying to figure out whether his arms are actually attached. He thinks so. Maybe. The concussion's making everything wobble sort of alarmingly.

"'Be more careful,'" Dean reads incredulously. "'I don't want you to die.' Really? _Really?_ "

* * *

"Hi, Sam," Jesse says. He's drumming his heels against the Impala's bumper and chewing on his lip like he hadn't disappeared into thin air the last time Sam saw him.

Sam drops his backpack on the asphalt and goes to lean next to him. "Hey," he says. "Your parents doing alright?"

"Yeah. We're all okay."

"That's good," says Sam.

"I guess so."

The kid looks tired and lonely. He doesn't really remind Sam of himself at that age, but if he looks just right he can see _Dean_ , world-weary and cautious, big eyes and big circles to go under them.

Jesse turns his face up into the sun and says, "Nobody's found us. But I wanted to come find you." He leans hesitantly up against Sam's side; he's so small that it takes Sam a few moments to realize that he's done it.

Sam looks down at the top of his head. He doesn't know what to do with him; he'd never really been big on kids. They didn't like him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Jesse says again. "I said we're okay. Stop asking me that!"

"Okay."

They sit in companionable silence. There's a million things he _should_ be saying to Jesse, about training and helping to kill Lucifer and always, always, always making sure to stay good, stay human, but they all choke in his throat. Sam stares out over the flat land and thinks he's the last person in the world who can give advice on anything to do with demons.

"You said you understood," Jesse says suddenly. He's picking at a stray thread on his jacket that never gets any longer. "Are you like me? Half-demon?"

Sam sighs and cautiously reaches up to ruffle the kid's hair. Sam'd always liked it when Dean did it to him when he was a kid, even if he protested. "Not exactly like you," Sam says truthfully. "My parents were both human."

"So you lied again." Jesse's hands clench. The Impala rattles on her wheels; Sam doesn't even jump. Before, with Ruby, his power had responded to his moods and sent stuff flying all the time. It's not all that surprising.

"No," he says. "I am a freak. Just a different kind than you." Jesse dislodges his hand to look up, squinting against the sun's glare, and Sam finds he can smile a little when he says, "A demon came into my room when I was a baby and bled into my mouth."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Sam sighs. "Oh. I made the wrong choice, though, and I ended up doing something really bad with my powers. What're you gonna do with yours?"

Jesse's head nestles against his ribs as the kid shrugs. "Protect my parents," he says. "What did you do?"

Sam swallows hard, but it's... easier to talk to a kid then it is to Dean. It's easier to admit what he did wrong and the reasons he did it. "I tried to protect my brother," he says, "And when that didn't work, I tried to get revenge."

"My Dad says an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind."

And somewhere in the world, someone's going to go blind after getting vengeance. Sam really hopes it's not him. "Yeah? My Dad used to say 'don't get mad, get even.'"

"No offense," Jesse mumbles, "But your dad was kind of a douche, then. Everybody knows you have to forgive and forget to _really_ beat someone."

And somewhere else, terrorists shake hands with their victims and everyone wins. Jesus. Sam laughs. He has to. "We never really got that memo in my family," he says. "We started hunting monsters because a demon killed my Mom."

Jesse whispers, "I'm sorry," and then he swallows and says, faintly, "I... I could probably bring her back. If I tried really hard. I brought the babysitter back. The one who scratched through her brain."

All the hair goes up on the back of Sam's neck. If he were the same person he was last year, with demon blood swirling through his veins and demon rage in his skull, he would have killed this boy by now. Jesse's neck is small and fragile under his palm; there wouldn't be time for him to react.

Sometimes, he wishes Dad had just done it to him, back then, before all of this shit went down.

The person he is now is just vaguely touched by the offer. "She's been gone a long time," he says gently. "And you shouldn't use your powers like that."

"I thought superheros were supposed to do good things with their powers?"

"Yeah, but you remember the Spiderman speech? 'With great power-'"

"'Comes great responsibility.'"

"That's the one," Sam says. Jesse's a warm, sweaty weight against his side when he shifts, one of the kid's heels digging into his shin; it feels... normal. Good. Like sitting with Dean had, when he'd been fifteen and still small enough to fit under his brother's arm.

Jesse's nose wrinkles. "So I shouldn't save people?" he asks. "Peter Parker does!"

Sam wants to say, 'you're just a kid.' He doesn't. "Peter Parker didn't have people trying to kill him just for being alive," Sam points out. "You want to keep your parents safe, Jesse. You can't do that and save the rest of the world at the same time. The demons will find you."

Or the hunters. Or the angels. Sam doesn't want to poke a hole in that particular belief, though, not unless he has to. He hadn't known that the angels wanted him dead until he was twenty six and it still devastated him. He's not going to tell an **eleven year old** that angels were out to kill him.

"I saved you," Jesse says.

"Thanks for that."

Jesse peers up at him through his hair. "Freaks should look out for each other," he says shyly. "Like in the X-Men. We could make a school and everything."

"You think?"

"Yeah."

Another, smaller silence, then the kid scuffs the heel of one sneaker against the Impala's bumper and wiggles away from Sam. "I should go," he says, "Before your brother's friend comes back. I don't like him." He pushes himself off the hood of the Impala, lands with both feet on the asphalt and a cloud of South Dakota dust rising around him; he looks like any other kid you could pass on the street, except Sam can almost feel something moving in him now that he knows to look.

It's not demon, but it's not really human either.

Sam rises to his feet and dusts off his ass print so Dean can't bitch him out. "I don't like him most of the time either," he confides. He smiles over at the kid and Jesse breaks into a delighted grin. "He's kind of a bitc-well. You get the idea."

Jesse's laughter lingers long after the kid's disappeared.

* * *

There's another note on the mirror in the morning. Sam slides it off and studies it; it's a picture this time instead of a letter. A big, black car and two people with brown mops for hair, blue sky and fat, smiling yellow sun. "Cute," he tells the air, and smiles.

Dean draws a stick figure Jesse in a superhero costume and Sam pins it to the wall before they leave.


End file.
